warm weather but humid and raining

[Rendelf]

Agree with others that the walls should not be wet!

 

Have you moved lots of stuff to the back of the boat (on the roof or inside) so that any water in the bilge will accumulate at the stern? There should be access at the very back for this purpose. If not, I'd do that, and leave it a few days.

 

One issue our boat has is the bearers for the ballast are WOODEN strips laid on pond liner. No idea why the builder thought that a good idea, but, the strips are often wet, and the liner harbours moisture. Short of tearing the floor up - there isn't much to be done. When the engine is running, I usually aim a powerful space heater (with the heat turned low) into various access holes and run it from the inverter.

 

Had a plumbing leak in the winter, and was presented with a rather wet bilge. As we don't have shore power, I opened all the bilges access panels (two). Then I cut a further three. As most of the water was at the back of the boat, the stove wasn't helping too much. My solution was to rig some of the aforementioned B&Q 'moisture catcher' thingies (plastic containers with replaceable moisture-loving tablets) up with PC fans - to create low-impact dehumidifiers. I put these in the bilges. With the air moving over them, they quickly grab moisture from down there, though I did run through the tablets fairly fast, so not a long-term solution. It's probably important to arrange such things so that bilge air, not outside air, is doing most of the travelling through the devices - otherwise you'll just be collecting moisture from the atmosphere.

 

PC fans can also be placed beneath mushroom vents to create low amp extractors. I also ran them in bilges constantly to gradually remove moisture. I recomment the 120mm ones - around £5 each I think.

 

How much solar do you have? Small dehumidifiers don't pull much more juice than a fridge (they work the same way as my bodge above, but with a cold aluminium plate instead of the replaceable moisture tablet things)

[Alan Taylor]

it's worth lighting the fire with doors and windows open this weather, it doesn't take much to dry it out.